Luís Vicente Trio

Portugal

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This trio was one of the items of good news brought to us from the stage last year. Hugo Antunes and Pedro Melo Alves had already previously bonded, especially with the Symph trio, but the solidity that they brought as a rhythmic duo was what Luís Vicente’s trumpet needed to fly off in freedom. The themes are very simple, in most cases limited to mere motives or melodic lines, in order to ensure the most important element, namely improvisation for three, with deconstructions for two and even one.

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And because it is the improvisational factor which most interests the trio, we encounter this with one foot in the tradition of free jazz and the other in freely improvised music, here and there incorporating other propositions, between a certain tribalism and the use of trance structures. A frequent concern is the flight to primers, in chequered dynamics which try to turn their resources upside down: it is normal to hear “fortes” which are deliberately low-intensity and “pianissimos” inducing disquiet. The music created is intended to be raw and naked, in a kind of brutalism which allows for nuance, detail and introspection. It is no longer an aesthetics of the scream or “fire music” (to paraphrase the album with the same name from Archie Shepp), but something which chooses the scream or fire as a greater measure with which to build its webs further below – with the same attitude, but with a sense of restraint. (Rui Eduardo Paes)

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